With just over 10 minutes to go in the first half, 6-foot-5 Jon Scheyer found himself matched up off a defensive switch with Wisconsin's 6-foot-11 Brian Butch. With more than 20 seconds left on the shot clock, Scheyer appeared to have no chance of keeping Butch from imposing his will.
Scheyer visibly struggled to keep Butch off the block, and Butch matched him face-for-grimacing-face, silently pleading with his guards to get him the ball. Wisconsin point guard Trevon Hughes saw the mismatch, but the Blue Devils' pressure defense would not allow the Badgers to exploit the size difference.
Instead, Hughes missed a difficult runner with just two seconds left on the shot clock-one of his seven misfires in the half-and the Blue Devils capitalized at the other end with a Kyle Singler three to push their lead to 10.
"We can get caught in mismatches sometimes, but if I try to not let him get the ball, and we're pressuring the ball, it's hard to make those passes, even if he's open or even if he's a lot bigger than me," Scheyer said.
Facing the biggest team they'll likely see all year, the Blue Devils were the bully Tuesday, forcing Wisconsin into an up-and-down first half the Badgers wanted no part of. Duke's guards obstructed passing lanes inside and the apparent size advantage Wisconsin possessed never translated into a dominance in the post.
The Badgers featured three skilled players taller than 6-foot-10, and yet Duke lost the points-in-the-paint battle by only six. And the Blue Devils more than made up for that by scoring 17 fast-break points and hitting nine first-half threes.
"We really wanted to set the tone early about how the game was going to be played," Scheyer said. "We wanted to play an up-tempo game."
The big question coming into the season was what the Blue Devils were going to do inside. Tuesday's answer: they're just going to dominate the outside.
Duke's two true big men, Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek, were complete non-factors. But the Blue Devils picked up Wisconsin's guards full court, and the defensive pressure pushed the Badgers' offense away from the basket. Even when Wisconsin's big men did get the ball inside, Duke's athletic guards-specifically Gerald Henderson and DeMarcus Nelson-were able not just to provide token help, but to actually block and alter the taller players' shots.
The Badgers partially solved Duke's pressure in the second half and were able to get the ball inside with more consistency. Butch, however, picked up his fourth foul less than three minutes into the period, and the Blue Devils got out on the break enough to ensure the game never got competitive.
"They found how they were going to enter the ball and they made a few adjustments at halftime," Henderson said. "And they're a good team, so they weren't going to just let us hound them the whole game. We just tried to contain that and keep our lead."
The ease with which the Blue Devils asserted their style-helped greatly by the fact that this was Wisconsin's first tough game-disguised how readily Tuesday's contest could have been a slugfest in the 50s. Head coach Mike Krzyzewski knows this and was quick to praise the 20th-ranked Badgers, pointing out the pace of the game distorted the difference between the two teams.
"It ended up being our kind of game tonight, but we're not that much better than them," Krzyzewski said.
True. But if the Blue Devils continue to force their opponents into the fast-paced game they want, Krzyzewski will gladly offer that modest line every night.
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